The head of the Defense Committee of the Duma (Chamber of Deputies) of RussiaAndréi Kartapólov, defended this Wednesday the presence of Cubans in the ranks of the Russian Army in Ukraine.
“No one can forbid a Cuban patriot from loving Russia, because we were in Cuba so many times that there, really, the attitude towards our country is the warmest,” he said in statements to the press, quoted by the agency. EFE.
Kartapólov considered that “it is not at all strange” that young Cubans want to join the Russian troops and welcomed “all those who want to help our country in its just fight against world fascism, those who want to join the Russian Armed Forces.”
The deputy’s words come after the ratification by the Russian Parliament of an intergovernmental agreement on military cooperation with Cuba and just when the United States has denounced the massive participation of mercenaries from the island in the war in Ukraine.
Russian Duma ratifies military cooperation agreement with Cuba
US accusatory memorandum
The parliamentary ratification took place after the US State Department distributed to its diplomats an internal memorandum in which it denounces that between 1,000 and 5,000 Cubans have been recruited by Russia as mercenaries, particularly for the war in Ukraine.
“After North Korea, Cuba has become the largest source of foreign mercenaries for the Russian military,” the memo states, accusing Havana of having “failed to protect its citizens from being used as pawns in the Russian-Ukrainian war.”
According to other sources cited by EFEincluding from Ukraine itself, up to 20 thousand Cubans would have been recruited to fight alongside the Russian troops, of which between 200 and 300 would have died.
The Cuban Government has not offered data in this regard, although some time ago it recognized the existence of a recruitment network and claimed to have investigated and dismantled it. However, figures, names and stories of Cubans recruited by Moscow have continued to emerge.
Cuba and Russia, traditional allies since Soviet times, have promoted their bilateral relationship in recent years and even more so currently, when the island is experiencing its worst economic crisis in three decades, with a shortage of basic goods and an inflationary spiral, accentuated by the structural weaknesses of its production and the recurring failures of its electrical system.
EFE / OnCuba
